Search results for: "Generosity"

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  2. A Network of Goodness
     … You practice generosity. When you choose to give, you benefit. Your mind gets more expansive, and you realize that you’re not a slave to your selfishness. And of course, the people who receive your gift benefit as well. The same with virtue: There are a lot of people out there who are very happy that you’re not breaking the precepts. Otherwise, you … 
  3. The Path of Questions
     … This morning we read a passage by Ajaan Lee in which he talks about how generosity, virtue, and meditation both depend upon discernment and give rise to discernment. In other words, you have to use your discernment in each of these levels of the practice. It’s not that you have to wait until the very end for discernment to land on you. You … 
  4. The Duty to Be Positive
     … That’s why recollection of your generosity and recollection of your virtue are both really important parts of the path. They’re not there to make you simply feel that you’re good enough as you already are. They’re there to give you the energy you need to pick up your duties and carry on. As the Buddha said, death can come at … 
  5. A Sense of Entitlement
     … It’s come about through the generosity of lots and lots of different people. They’ve been generous with their money, generous with their time, generous with their strength. Everything we have here is the result of somebody’s generosity. One of the reasons we need to be really active in the practice, dedicated to the practice, not complacent in the practice, is because … 
  6. A Good Path to Be On
     … One is generosity. When you give something, it really is meaningful. Because karma is what? It’s your intention. And your intentions have power. Think about that. You’re not just a victim of forces beyond your control. You exercise a very important element of control in your life, in the intentions that you act on. So the fact that you give something to … 
  7. Right View Comes First
     … The same with generosity: If everything were predetermined by outside forces, an act of generosity wouldn’t have any meaning. And if you were snuffed out at death, it wouldn’t have much meaning, either. But the fact is that there’s life after death, and it’s also a fact that you have the choice, and other people have the choice, to give … 
  8. The Economy of Goodness
     … With generosity, you’re wealthy because of the things you give away. In all these cases, the wealth is not so much in the things or in the actions, it’s in the state of mind. With generosity, the more you give away—you don’t want to give away so much that you’re harming yourself—but you give away things you might … 
  9. The Truth of Transcendence
     … He’d go through various topics starting with generosity and virtue and then the rewards that come from generosity and virtue. He’d talk about heaven, which is another part of the teaching on kamma: There is a life after this one, and the actions we do in this lifetime bear results now and on into the future. If the actions are good, they … 
  10. The Meaning of Happiness
     … So as we meditate, we’re here partly for the sake of the sense of ease and well-being that comes as you get the mind to settle down, but also for the sake of using that settled well-being as a tool to gain greater insight into the mind, and to strengthen our generosity, strengthen our virtue, strengthen all good qualities in the … 
  11. The Desire for Things to Be Different
     … He talks about generosity, he talks about virtue, and the good that can come from doing these things—how you can make your life a better life when you practice these things. Of course, he’s going to get to the point where the goodness of just virtue and generosity has its limitations, but even then, he doesn’t tell you to just give … 
  12. The Best of a Bad Situation
     … So when you find yourself in a bad situation, think about what you can do to make something good out of it, starting with generosity and going on to your meditation. Meditation nurtured by generosity is much better than meditation that’s just “my selfish thing that I’m going to do” because the “my selfish thing” attitude is basically “What can I get … 
  13. How to Be an Admirable Friend
     … The positive skills, of course, have to do with generosity – the way you give to others. It can be a matter of material things. It can be giving your time, giving respect, sharing your knowledge, giving your forgiveness. All of these things count as generosity. Again, other people benefit and you benefit, too. And you look at what you can give. This is a … 
  14. You Are Not Powerless
     … Then there’s generosity. We’re looking at the potential for the economy to break down. When the economy breaks down, there’s a danger of society breaking down. But what keeps society from breaking down is generosity. If you have something to share, be happy to share. As I said earlier, there’s the principle that what stays in a burning house gets … 
  15. Worlds to Watch Out For
     … Kamma, he said, is what makes generosity a reality. There were people in his time who said that generosity is all sham because they were teaching that people had no choice. Whatever people did, they just did because that was what was written into the world, so you couldn’t credit them with anything good or bad. For the people who taught that, it … 
  16. Integrity — In Memory of Luang Loong
     … more effort in your generosity, more effort in your virtue, more effort in your meditation. After all, it’s the effort you put into the goodness of the heart: That’s what both stays here and is something you can take with you. In the West, we often think about rebirth as a very “self” kind of teaching—the idea that my self is … 
  17. The Dhamma Bucket List
     … If you’re generous, you’re helping the world, but if for some reason the traces of your generosity get wiped out in the world, you’ve still got the quality of generosity in your heart and mind. If you’ve worked hard at being virtuous, doing a good job with your career, and if for some reason what you did and your career … 
  18. Compunction
     … He went on to add, “It’s because they haven’t had good practice in generosity and virtue.” Now, the training in generosity and virtue teaches you, to begin with, that you have to give before you’re going to get. And it’s teaching you at an age, if you’re learning this when you’re a child, where it’s a counterintuitive … 
  19. A Meritorious Heart
     … Then as you work through any limitations on your goodwill, you find that the mind develops an even greater sense of expansion that it can even with generosity. After all, your generosity has its limits. There’s only so much you can give in terms of your wealth, your material things, your energy, your time, because your time is limited, your energy is limited … 
  20. The Dignity of Restraint
     … Now if you’ve been practicing generosity and have really been serious about practicing the precepts, you’ve developed the ability to say No skillfully, which is why generosity and the precepts are not optional parts of the practice. They’re your foundation for the meditation. When you’ve made a practice of generosity and virtue, the mind’s ability to say No to … 
  21. Victory
     … The practice of generosity is often best expressed in that way: in seeing that there are some injustices, some unfair activities in the world, and maybe something can be done about them—if that’s an area where you feel inspired. This is the operating principle with generosity: your sense of inspiration. You want to help. You have something to give, whether it’s … 
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